A/N: New chapter time! Headline reads: Christine Regains Consciousness at last! (Out for seven chapters. That has got to be a record.)
erikfan: Don't be nervous, I won't forsake you. "Plotmaster" – Oooh! I like that title, maybe a little too much. It gives me a feeling of power, almost Erikesque back in his Phantom days. Hmmmm...the Plotmaster...yes...
Pertie: Thanks for the lovely compliments once again. I liked that last chapter too, for some reason. Perhaps it is because we get to see Erik's tender, romantic side - another of my favorites out of his many varied personas. Oh heck, I love them all, really.
phantomann: I love Nadir too. Strangely, I always picture him as Morgan Freeman in Robin Hood, the one with Kevin Costner. Sort of a kind, wise soul and very brave with a large heart. And no, I am not hiding Erik under my bed or anything, although I think I may have fallen in love with him. Hmmm. Perhaps that is why I seem to find his mind so easily. Ouija him, hey, that is not a bad idea! (Author knocks over chair in haste to find an open store.)
Twinkle22: I know. Isn't he perfect in a volatile, unpredictable, sweep you off your feet and take you to his lair kind of way? And yet, such a true romantic hero, capable of the purest unselfish love, as you pointed out. Our Erik is indeed a most intriguing and alluring paradox.
Jema Moda: Glad you liked it. Yes, he is indeed anguished right now, and it pains me to leave him that way for a time. But rest assured that he will be happy again one day. (Author is an admitted E/C shipper. Hold tight to that knowledge.) For now though, we move on to the anguish of the other two members of this desperate love triangle. You wanted me to make Raoul suffer, so the next few chapters we will be swimming in his angst for a while.
leonsalanna: Welcome to the fic! Glad to have you aboard. Yeah, I know. Raoul does ruin everything. But he will get his, don't worry. And it bothers me a little too that brilliant Erik would believe him, but if you look back at my author's notes for the last chapter, you will see that Raoul is able to play into Erik's own insecurities with his lie. Erik also tells Nadir in Ch. 7 that he is not willing to risk being the one to cause Christine to take her own life. He would give up any possibility of his own happiness rather than take a chance that he might cause her pain. Now that's love.
Ch. 8 – Choices
Raoul discarded his coat and sank wearily into his chair. The past weeks had been very long and difficult indeed. The recent upheaval in his home life had spilled over into his business life as well. Between enduring Philippe's constant lectures and carefully avoiding his wife's attempts to discuss the events of that horrible night, now two weeks past, he found himself utterly exhausted.
Philippe had of course learned of Christine's late night excursion, and it had only served to strengthen his belief that Raoul should waste no more time in putting her aside and finding a real wife – a woman this time of breeding and refinement who would at last give Raoul an heir as a proper wife should. To further complicate matters, several family business ventures that had recently come under Raoul's supervision had taken a turn for the worse, further fueling Philippe's belief that his brother's mentally unstable wife was becoming a dangerous distraction from more important matters.
Raoul sighed. Philippe had never approved of his marriage to Christine, nor had the majority of his family. That fact had been a constant strain on his marriage, and a great source of sadness to both him and his wife. She had never truly felt welcome among them, though he had done his best to make her as comfortable as possible in their presence. In his desperation, Raoul had at one time even considered denying his family and his title, and simply running away with her to some far off place where they could just be husband and wife, instead of the illustrious Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Chagny.
Raoul laid his head back against the expensive leather of his chair. The problem was, he thought, even if he were to give up everything for her, it still wouldn't change the fact that his wife was in love with another man and had been throughout their marriage and even before. His home, his family, his title, his money, his friends, his way of life – he was willing to lay it all aside if Christine would only give herself to him completely, finally closing her heart and mind to the dark figure who had resided there for so long.
True, Christine had been honest with him concerning her feelings when she had agreed to marry him. And she had, at least in body, been true to her word. Outwardly, Christine was nothing if not a faithful, devoted wife. She accompanied him to every social event, smiling and conversing pleasantly with his friends and relatives, knowing full well that they despised her. She was a conscientious mistress of his home and was always attentive to his needs, though admittedly her affection was of a friendly nature.
She had even willingly given him her body, though he had never once felt a trace of the passion that he had seen burning in her eyes so clearly when she had been on stage with her Angel the night of Don Juan Triumphant. In fact, if he were to be honest with himself, the vast majority of the time in their marriage bed she seemed to be patiently enduring his affections, and the remainder of the time she seemed to be wishing he were someone else entirely. The thought sickened him. He wondered briefly why he even bothered to go to such lengths to keep her, when it was becoming so very clear that she wanted nothing more than to be free.
Raoul stood up and walked over to the open window staring down into the gardens below. The spring breeze was warm, and the evening sunshine fell golden over the trees, illuminating a lone figure seated upon a garden bench. The slanting rays ignited the auburn of her curls with flashes of red-gold, and though most of her face was hidden from view, he could see that she was smiling. She was so beautiful and so innocent. His heart gave a familiar tug. No, he wouldn't give her up, not yet. Even this strange half-life that he was living with Christine now had to be better than a life without her.
Sighing in resignation, he ran a hand through his hair and reached for his jacket. No matter how much he might dread it, the time had come for him and his wife to sort through the wreckage of their marriage and decide whether or not there was anything left to salvage.
He still was uncertain how he was going to explain the events of a fortnight past. His mind was not accustomed to deception, and he found it wearied him to no end. But if it came down to lying to his wife or losing her forever, Raoul knew which option he would be forced to accept.
Reaching the door, he hesitated, then began his slow descent to the gardens below. His reluctant stride seemed strangely reminiscent of a man being led to the gallows.
Christine sat in the garden, her face turned up to the last dying rays of the evening sun. She loved the time just after sunset when the golden light of the day began to merge with the gentle purple haze of the night, combining in an array of muted colors that were a strange, glorious highbred of the two. The world took on a unique splendor in the twilight; its gentle illumination seemed to highlight only the beauty while blurring all the harsh edges that were so clearly exposed in the daylight. In an odd sort of way, its forgiving touch seemed symbolic of the light in which she saw him, somehow.
Her heart constricted painfully at the thought of her Angel. She had been so close to seeing him! But once again her own weakness had kept her from his arms. She thought of that night with both a thrill and a shudder. Parts of it she could remember clearly, as if they had only just occurred, and other parts were hazy or blank altogether.
She clearly remembered how it had all begun. She had been digging for a hairpin that she had dropped accidentally into the drawer of her armoire. As her fingers searched its dark recesses, she had felt a narrow strip of satin that seemed out of place amongst the cotton of her nightdresses and the silk of her stockings. Grasping it blindly, she had withdrawn it rather clumsily from beneath her folded garments. To her astonishment, her fingers emerged entangled in a long, black ribbon.
She knew with certainty that she had never purchased such a ribbon, and Raoul would never have bought her one in that particular color knowing full well the significance that it would have held for her.
The only logical explanation had seemed to be that the ribbon must have been left by someone who had stayed in the room at one time prior to her arrival - Raoul's mother or one of his aunts, perhaps. But the more she considered it, another possibility had ripened in her mind. Her hands shaking, she had lifted the ribbon to her face and inhaled deeply.
Immediately it was as if she had been transported back in time to another world. Her mind swam with the scent of roses and candles, the fine fabric of his clothes, and the wonderful heady mixture of exotic scents that were utterly foreign to her except for the fact that he had always smelled of them. It was as if the lands of his travels had clung to him in their scent, and when combined with the distinctive smell of the opera house that she loved, the mixture was more intoxicating to her than the most expensive cologne could ever be. It was as if everything she adored and everything she dreamed existed in the mere scent of him alone.
As the memories had overtaken her, she had fallen to the floor, weeping, her skirts billowing around her.
Then she had remembered the date. Six years ago to the day she had made the choice that had inevitably sealed her fate. She had left the man and the world she loved - all for the promise of safety and security, which she had ironically found to be highly overrated.
It had been her choice to leave him there in his anguish, to allow him to believe that she cared nothing for him, that she wanted a life with Raoul. She had been weak-willed, an indecisive fool. Because she had not been able to imagine a future with her passionate and volatile Angel, she had left him, foolishly thinking she had made the wiser choice in the steadfast predictability of Raoul and his placid devotion.
It had taken all of one night away from her Angel's magnetic presence to realize her terrible mistake, and two more for her to find the courage to admit it to Raoul. But in a twist of Fate that was only as much as she had deserved for her selfishness, she had returned to find him gone.
Disappointed, she had told herself that he would come and find her, forgiving her as he always did and then all would be made right. Her desperate hopes had been crushed brutally by the newspaper headline the following morning. "Mysterious Phantom of the Opera Found Dead Beneath the Opera Populaire".
It was then that she had finally lost her fragile grip on sanity, when she had realized that he was indeed never coming back, and worse, that she had ultimately betrayed him to his death. The guilt and the anguish that had overtaken her had been overwhelming in their intensity. And when she had considered the prospect of a lifetime without his voice, his touch, his powerful protective presence, her future had seemed to her an endless expanse of barren desert, a burden too heavy to bear. She had calmly stepped into the expensive porcelain bath of her suite, and slit her wrists without a second thought.
As she had lain there, awaiting her life to spill forth from her veins, she had wondered vaguely on what plane she would find him. Most likely she would not find him in heaven but in hell, as she knew her Angel had taken many lives. By taking her own, she was certain to join him. The thought made her smile.
But her attempt that first time had been thwarted. Raoul had come home early to find her, and to her regret a doctor had been able to pull her back reluctantly from the welcoming darkness.
After that, she had fallen into a sort of ambivalent detachment, unconcerned with her own future, a burden she bore now against her will. It was as if Raoul had pinned down her wings by forcing her to promise never to attempt to fly to her Angel ever again.
She had even agreed to marry him, finding it comforting to allow someone else to take responsibility for an existence she no longer desired. It was of no great concern to her anymore what man called her his wife, or kissed her goodnight, or entered her body for that matter, for it could never be the man whom she wanted.
But every so often, the weight of her choices fell especially heavy upon on her heart and mind, so that she was forced to break her promise to her husband and attempt once more to free herself from the gilded prison of her life. Most recently, after having discovered the ribbon and feeling the torrent of memories it had unleashed, she had once again found her weary soul begging for release from the lie it had been forced to live.
It wasn't just the thought of her Angel and the life she could have had, or her guilt in his betrayal. It was every choice since that day six years ago as well whose consequences she found herself unable to bear. She had somehow allowed herself over the years to be stripped of all that had made her who she was: her laughter, her music, her dreams, her personality, her freedom. She felt all at once suffocated by the familiar, stifling realization that all she had endured had been brought about by her own hand.
Feeling a giddy sort of relief that she at least had the power to end the chain of poor decisions that had characterized her wasted life, she had begun to search the house for a means to secure her freedom. Finally, she had discovered a large bottle of sedatives hidden in Raoul's top desk drawer, but to her dismay she had found the bottle to be nearly empty. She took every one, but feared it would not be enough. She did not want to fail in her attempt this time and be dragged unwilling back to the land of the living once again.
She had then checked the other drawers finding nothing. Reaching the last one, she had given it a desperate tug, but it held fast. Frantically, she had searched the others and finally found a tiny silver key. With hope in her heart, she had quickly unlocked the drawer and found, to her disappointment, only a large number of important looking documents. She dug through them, flinging them carelessly on the floor in her search.
She would have left them there without a second thought, had she not noticed one word staring out at her from the topmost page: Phantom. Then, her heart had begun to race and she had picked up a fistful, scanning them hurriedly. It took her only a few moments to realize that she had been a fool. But an even greater realization had come as she began to comprehend the meaning of what she held in her hand: he was alive and he was here in Paris. The address was printed neatly at the bottom of the page.
She had stood up, intending to waste no further time in finding him, but a wave of violent nausea had hit her full force, knocking her back to her knees and reminding her of her previous actions. No! Oh God, no! Not now! She had thought. The irony of it would be too painfully beautiful: she would finally succeed in her attempts to leave this world on the very night when she had discovered the one thing that would make her wish to stay.
With grim determination, she had begun to pull herself to her feet. She would not be weak this time. If she were going to die, it would be in her Angel's arms.
Somehow she had managed to find her cloak and make it to the stable. She had given the driver the address and promised a large sum of money to persuade him to act against his master's wishes and allow his lady to go out alone at night. During the carriage ride, the sedatives had begun to take over. She had found herself drifting in and out of consciousness and with each bump of the wheels on the rough cobblestone, she had felt her stomach heave painfully.
It had fortunately not been far to the address and she eventually felt the carriage draw to a halt. Shaking herself roughly to will her limp limbs into obedience, she had emerged shakily from the carriage with the driver's help. She had ordered him to return home, reminding him of his master's certain anger if he were to learn of the driver's aid in her flight. With every last ounce of her strength, she had forced her failing limbs to carry her across the street to her Angel's door and had managed to ring the bell before everything finally went dark.
After that point, all of her memories were jumbled and confused. She could only remember bits and pieces: a gentle hand holding a cool cloth to her forehead, an achingly familiar voice, someone carrying her down the stairs... She could sense that her Angel had been with her somewhere in the darkness, though her recollections were so vague she could not be certain. Awaking back in her own bed, after all that she had done to ensure that she would never be forced to return to it, had been the greatest disappointment of all.
Eventually, she had recovered to the point where she felt she would be capable of confronting Raoul. Resolved to find what had transpired that night, she had sought him out many times, but always he had found an excuse to avoid her questions and her accusing eyes. Part of her felt guilt for all that she had put him through, but a growing part felt he deserved what he had wrought by his own selfishness and dishonesty.
Sighing, she knew the time had come to put an end to their charade of a marriage. But first, she had to find out what had truly happened on the night she had finally sought her Angel.
She could see Raoul walking slowly towards her now across the garden from the house. His face held a look of both resigned misery and desperation, like a cornered animal.
Their eyes met. Christine knew that the time had come to lay open the wounds of their marriage to the light of day so that they both might begin to heal at last.
